The Tobey Book

The Tobey Book is a unique collection of local history for Brighton and area. Most of the material was collected and assembled by Mr. Wilmot Maxwell Tobey (1877-1959) who lived in the Brighton area for a time but was a scientist in Ottawa most of his adult life. In his later years, Mr. Tobey worked on this collection of Brighton history. In the 1970s, a Queen's University student, Barbara Nyland, compiled Mr. Tobey's material as a thesis project and worked with Mr. William Sprung to produce a book containing the original content as well as added information and resources for using the document. Several books were produced and distributed to local libraries where they were made available for loan but later restricted in order to preserve a rare resource.​In 2005, The History Guy asked the Brighton Public Library if they would support a project for digitizing the Tobey Book and they agreed. The entire collection was scanned and provided as JPG files for each page and in a single PDF format. Copies of these files were distributed on CD's to the library and local museums. This wonderful historical resource is used routinely for research on Brighton and area. However, researchers should note that most of the material included in The Tobey Book is copied from very early issues of Brighton newspapers or other original documents and should be considered in their time and place. There is commentary for the successive sections of the document, organized by year, and we must remember that the commentary is based on information that was available to the writer at the time, mostly in the early decades of the 1900s. We have access to so much more information now that some of this writing may seem arcane, but look closer and see it in context. It will charm you if nothing else.​A copy of The Tobey book is being made available on my web site with the approval of the Brighton Public Library. Please use it with respect, always providing references to the source if you use parts of it in subsequent publications. Thanks.